Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify one common misrepresentation, which is the government brought a discussion paper. Clearly, it brought a motion to PROC and it was going to use its majority to vote it through.

When we talked about the Standing Orders in the House, I gave a speech. A lot of members have ideas about Standing Orders. I think of the myriad of things we could change to make things work better, such as when bills are introduced at first reading, all parties would stand, give speeches, and say they all agree. Then we continue to have second reading, it goes to committee, and on and on. Why do we not just send it to the Senate? There are so many ideas. We could have votes every day after question period and that could be put in place forever, so we would not have these family unfriendly votes late at night, all those kinds of things.

With all the changes that could have been made, could the member comment on why the government picked these ones as the priority?

I would like to discuss the other items, and we did in fact propose a discussion. The motion was to create a discussion. I was there for it. I co-wrote the motion with the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame. It was very important to have a discussion on how to do these very things, but we never did get to that. We had a filibuster.

Mr. Speaker, I want to build on the previous question. When we presented the discussion paper, some items in the discussion paper made it into the motion and some did not. There was opportunity, as my colleague across the way said, to have others.

Could the member explain to Canadians a little more on the value of putting forward a discussion paper, opening it up for parliamentarians to have some input on, and then presenting a motion here at this point, with which we will move forward?

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we hoped to have a discussion to build on the ideas, to perhaps invite witnesses to discuss how it was done in other countries, and to see what other people did.

What ended up coming out of this was a few things committed to in the platform, rather than the very wide range of things coming out of Standing Order 51 debate. There were things the opposition members themselves wanted to discuss but did not actually want to discuss.

The process did not work as I would have liked. However, this is where we are. We have a motion that will improve the rights of members in the House. It is very worthwhile and very important to proceed with this.

Mr. Speaker, I find it quite amusing to hear my colleague opposite talk about discussions, when an agenda cloaked in white, purity, and sunny ways was shamelessly imposed on us in a major way. Today, as an NDP member, I have to mention the Senate, which has said that the infrastructure bank should not be included in omnibus bills. I am even citing the Senate, which goes to show how much everyone agrees.

In my opinion, it is ridiculous for the government to claim to be a new breath of fresh air for democracy when it is imposing a monstrous bill, inserted in an omnibus bill, to make its pals happy.

Bill C-44 was introduced as part of the budget. We made it very clear in the budget that we were going to create the infrastructure bank. Our plans to do that were clear. The infrastructure bank is a way of investing and creating a good fund that will make it possible to invest in infrastructure across the country.

In my riding of Laurentides—Labelle, there is a significant need for infrastructure. In many cases, the money for infrastructure just is not there. The infrastructure bank will help in such cases, and that is why it is extremely important for the development of infrastructure and of the country.

Mr. Speaker, I sat in on the PROC committee meeting, which was filibustered for almost 700 hours. There was a lot of concern about how we needed to have a discussion, but the opposition members did not bring forward any ideas. They only said why they did not like it.

How can we avoid this in the future? How can we have those discussions, rather than a filibuster, with some members saying they do not like what has been brought forward?

Mr. Speaker, that is an easy one. If the opposition came to the table as honest brokers and came to the government to discuss this, which is what we were looking for, we would have had a much more productive discussion and it would have resulted in a motion. If they did not agree with it, they could have filibustered at that point. However, at least we would have had the discussion.

The best way of going forward is by having everybody come to the table and being honest with their opinions.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with my colleague for Chilliwack—Hope.

First, I am so pleased to hear that our colleague for Scarborough—Agincourt will be speaking again, and that this was not his last speech today.

I rise today to speak to Motion No. 18, the government motion mostly about the estimates process and the government's shameful move to reduce parliamentary oversight by changing the tabling and reporting dates of the main estimates. It is the government's misguided and cynical attempt to change the estimates process so it appears it is trying to do something, anything actually.

How did we get to this point?

Over a year ago, the Treasury Board President appeared in the operations and estimates committee, OGGO, to discuss the difficulty in understanding the estimates process. We discussed the alignment of the estimates to the budget, accrual versus cash accounting, and the unclear reporting of the departments. He proposed a solution, which was an odd one. His solution to all of these problems was to simply take away two months of oversight by moving the tabling of the estimates to May 1 from March 1, allow zero time for the opposition to study the estimates before choosing the two committees of the whole, and take away a few supply days. This was supposed to be the solution to the issue of the estimates being difficult to understand. If members do not understand the process, then surely the government will give them less time. That must be solution.

Despite the government having proved completely unable to fix its own internal administrative processes, the President of the Treasury Board decided the solution was to take away two months of oversight on the estimates. We were told that changing the Standing Orders to allow the government to move the tabling of the estimates from March 1 to May 1, leaving parliamentarians just over a month before the estimates were considered reported, would allow the government to ensure more of the budget would be in the estimates.

We asked the Treasury Board President about these concerns in committee and we were told not to worry, that we could change the Standing Orders back in a couple of years. We were told not to worry about having only five sitting weeks in May and June to review the estimates. The Liberals would guarantee that ministers would show up to all committee meetings regarding the main estimates. To quote the committee evidence, the President of the Treasury Board stated “.You have my personal commitment, but also the commitment of our government, to make sure that is the case”, that the ministers will show up.

The current Minister of Public Services is on leave and the department in an absolute mess. There is the Liberal Phoenix fiasco. There is the Liberals's on-again, off-again love affair with Boeing, which is truly sad. In Paris right now the love affair is off. It is very odd that the city of love cannot get back the love affair with Boeing. There was the scandal of the Liberal Party executives deleting emails in Shared Services Canada, reminiscent of Hillary Clinton. Then there is the ongoing shipbuilding delays that are costing taxpayers billions.

Therefore, with all of this going on, do members think the fill-in minister, if anyone even knows who that person is, or the parliamentary secretary would show up for the estimates? I am pretty sure members can guess what the answer is: No. The first chance the government had to put its money where its mouth was and we ended up with the deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement representing the minister. It was not that the deputy minister did not do a great job. We got all the same nonsensical answers we would have received from the minister herself, but it was the principle of the thing.

Kin Hubbard, the American satirist, had an oft-quoted line, “When a fellow says, 'It ain't the money but the principle of the thing,' it's the money.” In this case, it is both; it is the principle and the money, taxpayer money.

Another well-known and similar quote from H. L. Mencken is, “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” Now Mencken was a very influential and prolific journalist in America during the depression area. He wrote a lot about the shenanigans and shams of con artists in the world. He would have had a lot of fun writing about this, because shams of con artists were his specialty.

The government is saying that to improve transparency, we must decrease transparency. In order to give more power of oversight to parliamentarians, we must first take away oversight to parliamentarians.

We told the Treasury Board President that if there was an alignment issue, why not move the budget up to an earlier fixed date. This was recommended by the all-party OGGO report in 2012 on the estimates. He told us that it was not possible due to timing issues. Therefore, we have two rulings on timing issues; unilaterally changing the Standing Orders on estimates is good, changing timing for the budget is bad.

Before anyone thinks this is just a partisan rant about the government, it is not just me who thinks the government is completely wrong on the issue. The PBO noted:

Before agreeing to the changes proposed by the Government, parliamentarians may wish revisit the core problem that undermines their financial scrutiny: the Government’s own internal administrative processes.

The PBO was in committee just this morning and again noted that moving the date would have little to no effect on alignment if the internal processes on budget and spending approval are not reformed, which is not happening. He further stated that taking away time for MPs to scrutinize government spending, as this motion would do, would be of no benefit at all to Parliament or to oversight by parliamentarians. The PBO proved this point by pointing out in a supplementary estimates analysis how many new budget measures appeared in each supplementary estimate.

In the 2016 supplementary estimates (A), 70% of new spending announced in the budget was in the supplementary estimates (A). If we go a year closer, with all the hard work they put into it, we see a new total of just 44% in the supplementary estimates (A). Incredibly, in response to this failure, the TBS president said it was “progress”.

We asked the minister to share his plans to reform the internal process and achieve alignment, and he refused, referring instead to his four-pillar discussion paper as a “concrete plan”, in his words. That is the same paper the PBO just this morning inconveniently noted was not a plan, since it had nothing concrete in it to address the process issues.

We further asked the TBS president if he would follow parliamentary tradition and make no changes to the Standing Orders without unanimous consent of the opposition parties. He said—well, actually, he did not say.

My learned colleague from Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, who is our committee chair, asked repeatedly if, as was the long-held custom, the TBS president would commit to changes to Standing Orders only if he had all-party support. It was like asking the Prime Minister how many meetings he had with the Ethics Commissioner. All we got was non-answers.

Now we know why he would not answer such a simple question: they planned all along just to ram the changes down the throats of the opposition. What is next when this little experiment fails? Will it be further reduction in oversight?

In committee, the Treasury Board president trotted out a line from an interview with Kevin Page, the former PBO, as justification for his plans. He quoted Kevin Page as saying, “I support your recommendation that this adjustment may take two years to implement.” There was nothing about its being a good idea; it was just that it would take two years to implement. What the Treasury Board president did not know, however, were a couple of other thoughts from Kevin Page, also in a Globe and Mail interview. The former parliamentary budget officer stated:

The recommendations for change in the discussion paper seem to have come from a public servant's perspective.

It is not from a parliamentary perspective or a perspective of oversight to protect taxpayers, but from a public servant's perspective.

The article continues:

The report does not start from the perspective of the financial-control responsibilities of Parliament.

With great respect to [the Treasury Board president]...the specific proposals in the report do not go far to strengthen Parliament's financial control.

The current PBO said of the proposed estimates changes:

With respect to delaying the main estimates, the Government indicates that the core impediment in aligning the budget and estimates arises from the Government's own sclerotic internal administrative processes, rather than parliamentary timelines.

The PBO further noted that:

...the Secretariat is further away from its goal in 2017-18, rather than closer to it. This raises a significant question of whether the Government's proposal to delay the main estimates would result in meaningful alignment with the budget.

In response to these learned experts, the minister said he did not agree with every utterance from the PBO. Those are his exact words: utterances.

On this side of the House, we believe we should pay attention to such utterances. Reducing oversight of spending for no gain does not serve Canadian taxpayers, nor does it serve parliamentarians. I strongly urge the government to withdraw its damaging changes to the estimates timing.

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back a bit in history and ask the hon. member how many times the Mulroney Conservative government unilaterally changed the Standing Orders. Was it between 50 and 60 times or 60 and 70 times?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to give a little history lesson: it was a Progressive Conservative, not a Mulroney Conservative question.

Perhaps I would like to invite the member to get into his DeLorean and go back to the future to today's discussion. We are not talking about what happened decades ago. We are talking about the current government's attack on our rights of oversight of parliamentary spending. It is shameful that every time we bring up these issues of unparliamentary attacks on the parliamentary budget officer and our right to oversee spending, the Liberals go back to, “What about 30 years ago? Did not Mulroney do this? Did not Harper do that?”

In this House, we are here to discuss today's Motion No. 18. I would suggest that the Liberals stick to it; if they did, they would see it is a bad motion and they would withdraw—

I would like to know if he really finds it transparent and democratic to table Motion No. 18 in the final days of this Parliament.

Indeed, we have been sitting for weeks until midnight, probably because the Liberals were unable to obtain agreement from all parties to implement this major reform to our Standing Orders. They wanted to do it on the pretext of holding discussions with everyone. They wanted to impose it on us, but they had to back down on certain measures that were supposed to improve work-life balance.

I must say that it has been very difficult in my home for the last month with a three-year-old little girl. We have worked and had votes in the evening every evening for more than a month. We sit until midnight and we begin the same thing again the next morning.

We do all that, but very few bills have been passed by the House, because the Liberals took so much time putting everything in place. Then we need to support, vote on, and pass all that. There are very few people in civil society who are aware of all these changes.

How can we say that it is democratic and transparent when it is done in this fashion, by ramming it through?

Mr. Speaker, that was a very good question from my colleague from the NDP, and she brought up a lot of very valid points. The perfect word that she used was “pretense”, and that is what the Liberals are operating under. Every time this government stumbles or cannot get motions or bills through, it makes a power grab. It does it under the pretense of “modernization” or making it “family friendly”.

It is very clear that people on this side of the House—my colleagues from the NDP, the Bloc, the Green Party—and the public in general see this motion for what it is. It is a cynical attempt to reduce our rights. It is a cynical attempt by the government to delay and block our ability to provide proper oversight on its spending and its actions, and that is shameful.

One day this government will fall, and either the Conservative Party or perhaps the NDP will be in power. The Liberals then will want the same protection from a government changing the rules without unanimous consent that we are demanding here now. Again, I strongly suggest to the government that it go back to tradition and get unanimous consent from all opposition parties before it changes the way we operate in this House.

Mr. Speaker, I know the debate has been fractious at times and I know there is a bit of bad blood, but I am of the view that regardless of our partisanship, we agree more than we disagree. In the spirit of co-operation, I understand the member would like to see a better alignment between the budget and the estimates process and I think we all would like better financial scrutiny of the estimates process.

The member mentioned the PBO report, and he mentioned three items in the OGGO report: presentation of initiatives, timing of new budget measures, and differing accounting assumptions and scope. I recognize that it is not a complete answer and that there is work needed on the government's end to better align the estimates and the budget process, but is this not one piece of the puzzle? Does the member not think so?

Mr. Speaker, it is the end part of the issue. We are putting the cart before the horse in changing the estimates tabling process. We have to get the processes right so that we have clear reporting and clear documentation on the spending.

The parliamentary budget officer, both in the report on the supplementary estimates (A) and in his previous report from last year commenting on the government's attempt to change the estimates process, made it very clear that the issue is not with the timing in aligning the estimates with the budget; the problem is with the bureaucracy not getting the programs out in time. Changing the estimates and reducing our oversight will have zero value until the government gets its act together with its processes.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again in the House to debate an important issue.

Canadians tuning in today can perhaps be forgiven if they are wondering what Motion No. 18 means. Most probably do not give a lot of consideration to what the Standing Orders mean and how they affect their lives, but this motion is really about accountability and transparency of government and of the House of Commons. That is what we are debating today.

After several months, the government has finally put forward some proposals to change the Standing Orders, and it is important for people to understand how we arrived at this point and how we arrived at the proposals that are on the table today.

The road that we are on began over a year ago, when the government proposed Motion No. 6. The government was frustrated with the opposition for opposing its legislation and its attempts to change our laws. We were doing our job, but the government became frustrated with that, so it brought in Motion No. 6, which was by all accounts a draconian motion to take away the rights of the opposition, thereby disenfranchising the people that we represent, the millions of Canadians who voted for parties other than the governing party. We were sent here to do an important job; certain members of the government understand that, while others clearly need a reminder.

We saw what happened when the Prime Minister's anger boiled over. He came down to this end of the chamber, made contact with one member, grabbed another one, and we spent days debating his violation of the parliamentary privileges of members of the House. Only because of the Prime Minister's unparliamentary outburst did the government withdraw Motion No. 6 at the time, and we went back to operating under the normal Standing Orders that give opposition members their rights in this place.

We then came to March of this year and a supposed discussion paper. I listened with some amusement to the previous Liberal speaker and questioner talking about how this was just a discussion paper and how the government had no agenda. In fact, we heard from the previous speaker that freedom now reigns in committees and the Liberals are just operating as a bunch of free agents. They do not have any direction from the Prime Minister's Office or from ministers' offices. They just act on their own goodwill and good ideas.

Of course, the discussion paper was tabled on a Friday afternoon before a break week. Then, two hours later, a motion was presented calling for discussion of the paper that had just been discovered, just been translated, just been tabled before Canadians.

I guess an idea popped into the head of the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame to bring this discussion paper before the procedure and House affairs committee with a firm deadline for the committee to report back to the House on these changes by June 2. It was essentially holding a hammer over the heads of opposition members. We could talk about it all we wanted, except here was the deadline, here were the terms, and here was what was going to happen.

We in the opposition exercised our rights as opposition members to hold the government accountable and to use the tools at our disposal to draw Canadians' attention to these changes.

What did the Liberals propose to do in these changes? They proposed to cancel Friday sittings, thereby reducing accountability by 20%. The House would sit for fewer days.

They proposed that the Prime Minister would only be in the House for 45 minutes a week, for question period on Wednesdays. They also proposed to cut speaking times in half and have five-minute speeches instead of 10-minute speeches, because we all know how easy it is to get complex matters discussed in five minutes. Perhaps members of the government are wishing they had implemented that already, as I have reached that point in my speech right now.

The Liberals also proposed electronic voting, meaning that we would no longer have to stand and be counted. I can tell the House that from this vantage point, I have several times seen Liberal backbenchers making up their minds as the roll call was coming to them. As they had to stand and be counted, they realized either through their own conscience or through the pressure of their peers what they should do. It is important that we stand and be counted and be recorded here in the House of Commons.

The government proposes eliminating the ability of MPs to bring up and sustain debate at committees. We have seen the member for Lakeland do an admirable job of using the immigration committee to talk about the government's false reasons for closing down the Vegreville case processing centre. Through her efforts at committee, we have exposed the fact that the government rationale for that decision was false, that the cost savings were manufactured, that in fact it would be costing taxpayers much more money to shut down that system. We never would have had that debate if the government had had its way and eliminated the ability of MPs to do that.

The government also wanted to eliminate the ability of MPs to be able to bring up concurrence motions, to be able to debate committee reports here. We have had important debates many times in this session. Just yesterday, we talked about the Official Languages Act and got to talk about the fiasco that was the Liberals' appointment process for the Commissioner of Official Languages. These were their proposals. We are now left, after weeks of debate and weeks of the opposition using the strategic and procedural tactics available to us to draw attention to this and slow it down. The government has finally put forward this thin gruel of Standing Order changes.

It is not just members of the opposition who have taken offence to how this has been conducted. The member for Malpeque, a long-standing, respected member of this Parliament, who has sat at the cabinet table, who has sat in the official opposition, who has sat in the third party and is now on the government benches, but as a backbench member of Parliament, quite clearly said:

This is the House of Commons. It’s not the House of cabinet. It’s not the House of the PMO. It’s the House of Commons. It’s the people’s House, and the majority of the people in that House are not members of Cabinet.

Those are wise words, and I wish that government members, members of the Liberal caucus, would heed them.

The member also said the following:

I know there is some upset in my own party over the way things are at, at the moment, that the environment seems to be somewhat toxic. But opposition are using the only levers of power they have at the moment, and I understand that; I’ve been there.

The member for Malpeque understands that we do not unilaterally change the rules of the game to benefit the majority, that the rules are there to protect the minority.

Again, the government has time after time shown that it is actually more interested in having an audience than an opposition. The member for Malpeque served in the government of Jean Chrétien. It is unfortunate that the government does not follow that example. Jean Chrétien was a tough guy. There was no love lost between him and the opposition. He realized that this place served a purpose, that members of the opposition served a purpose. Before there were any changes to the Standing Orders, he struck an all-party committee, in which the government did not have the majority, to look at things that could be agreed upon to change.

This happened again in the previous Parliament. Everyone talks about Harper ramming through this and ramming through that. When it came to the Standing Orders, he respected the rules and he respected the opposition, and there was no change made if there was no agreement; the issue was not brought forward. That was the record of Stephen Harper. We know that the government will not follow Stephen Harper's example on that, but they should follow Jean Chrétien's example.

I want to address just one of the issues: the Prime Minister's question period. The government says this has to be done to enact their campaign commitments. However, Prime Minister's question period is nowhere to be seen in Motion No.18. I do not know why. Perhaps it is because the Prime Minister has the ability to answer as many questions as he wants without changing the Standing Orders. Maybe he has finally come to that realization. Perhaps it is not going too well when he has to answer time after time, for instance, how many times he met with the Ethics Commissioner. He refuses to answer time after time.

We have come to this place. This is thin gruel. There is not much there. What is there, again, is done without the consent and co-operation of the opposition.

We think that there are possibilities to make changes here, but we believe that the government should have come to the table with a more willing attitude to work with the opposition and only make those changes that could be agreed to by all the major parties in this place.

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague across the way carefully to understand exactly what message he is trying to get across and what his frustration is. I am confused. The government put forward a discussion paper to start a discussion. We have heard that said several times today. I hear the laughter on the other side, but immediately following the discussion paper, almost within hours, we were hearing misinformation, misinterpretation from the other side of the House being asked in question period and being thrown at this side. There was no interest in having a true discussion.

I am going to address one of the points that the member raised. Why was the Prime Minister looking to try and have one day in QP and then be absent the rest of the week? I heard that over and over again in QP. It was completely not the intent of the government. The government's intent was to add time to have the Prime Minister answer questions.

I am hearing him again today clearly not having the right information, continuing to express this rhetoric. How did the member opposite come to that kind of a conclusion? What evidence and information was provided that said the Prime Minister was just going to stand up once a week to be available for questions?

Mr. Speaker, when there is a motion put forward at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs within hours of the discussion paper, with an imposed deadline when those discussions would be referred back to the House, she will forgive us if we do not take the government at face value that it is just an open discussion. An open discussion could go on for years if we wanted it to, but when the Liberals had that firm deadline, that was the hammer over the head of the opposition.

In terms of the laughable need that the government House leader proposed, that we needed to change the Standing Orders for the Prime Minister to have his own question period, the Prime Minister can answer every question every day if he wants to. He has done it several weeks in a row. We quite enjoy it. I do not think he enjoys it very much, which is why it is not in the motion any longer. Once that is codified in the Standing Orders, and again it has been removed, it gives the government cover to have the Prime Minister not in the House except for that single day. We said the Prime Minister should answer all the questions he wants, he does not need to ram changes down the throats of the opposition to do it.

Mr. Speaker, I, unfortunately, have been one of those who had a ringside seat for this whole process from beginning to end and I agree with the member entirely when he does a recap. This whole thing speaks to complete ineptitude on the part of the government. All the problems we have had here have come from the government and most of them because the Liberals do not seem to know what the heck they are doing.

They brought in Motion No. 6, and as was pointed out, the Prime Minister's actions caused that to be reversed pretty darn quick. Then they brought out their famous discussion paper and it is absolutely true that the motion that followed was within hours and it had a deadline. They then pulled that back after we wasted six weeks on a filibuster that the opposition did not call for. The government caused that 24/7 filibuster and the Liberals know it was their doing.

What did the Liberals do at the end of six weeks? They withdrew the whole thing. It seems to me that when we finally looked at what is in front of us, it looks to me like the first thing the government did was fold, then it refolded on the second go-around, now it seems to have folded on the refold of the fold. Could the member comment on how much folding the government seems to be doing here?

Mr. Speaker, the only good thing that came out of the government's ineptitude and the government's exercise to try to ram down the throats of the opposition these changes to the Standing Orders was that the member for Hamilton Centre had more time at committee to share his wisdom, which he has just done with the House. The government has completely botched this effort.

There are things that we should do to modernize the House. If there were not that hammer over the head of the opposition, if there actually had been a good-faith effort to find ways to work together as parliamentarians, not as the Liberal government here with its new wisdom that needed no precedent, that it knew all and knew better, if the Liberals were here to change the way things work, if they had worked with the opposition in a good-faith effort, we would not be here where we are today with this thin gruel. After an entire spring session of wasting the time of the House to come up with Motion No. 18, it is quite frankly an embarrassment.

Kevin LamoureuxLiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

There have been discussions among the parties and I think you will find unanimous consent for the following motion:

That, notwithstanding any Standing or Special Order, when no Member rises to speak on Government Business No. 18 or no later than 1:59 p.m. today, all questions necessary to dispose of the motion be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until later today, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.